The Transform Nutrition Research Consortium convened the research symposium ‘Evidence for action in South Asia’ on Saturday 8 July 2017, at the Yak and Yeti Hotel, Kathmandu, Nepal. Over a hundred participants from NGOs (national and international) and academia working on nutrition, health and public health, rural and social development gathered together with government officials from Nepal, India and Bangladesh, donor agency representatives and journalists to discuss the important issue of tackling undernutrition in South Asia

Since the release of the India Health Report: Nutrition 2015 (IHR), the team has been engaged in disseminating the report at various platforms. We first launched the report in Delhi at a major event that featured the Ministers of Health, and Women and Child Development of the Government of India. This was a rare joint appearance of these two key Ministers and senior government officials to indicate broad support for an agenda to transform nutrition in India. [Read more...]

By Kavita Chauhan, Neha Raykar and Moutushi Majumder, Public Health Foundation of India

The Transform Nutrition project in India focuses on generating evidence and engaging with key stakeholders, including the media, to communicate research findings. The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), in collaboration with Vikas Samvad, a non-governmental organisation based in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh and with support from the POSHAN Project organised a meeting on Data for Nutrition: Role of Media in Strengthening Uptake of Nutrition Evidence. The participants comprised of editors, senior health correspondents, and young journalists from various districts of Madhya Pradesh, who cover health, nutrition and social development issues. [Read more...]

A review of nutrition surveillance in low-income countries has just been released by the Transform Nutrition research consortium. It describes the use and value of nutrition surveillance for a number of purposes including early warning of malnutrition, to develop and evaluate policies and programmes, and to assess progress towards international development goals for better nutrition.

Nutrition surveillance – the regular and systematic collection of data on nutritional indicators – is a subject most nutritionists perceive to be important but would rather leave others to deal with it. Why? [Read more...]

The Transform Nutrition Leaders Network is a community of nutrition experts that connect with their peers nationally and globally to share experiences and lessons. The network will provide a platform to contribute to discussions on the realities of tackling malnutrition and advocate for political leaders to prioritise nutrition on their agendas. Through regular communications, including webinars, events and blogs, there will be many opportunities and different ways to engage and participate in the Network. For more information contact: Jessica Meeker at the Institute of Development Studies E: j.meeker@ids.ac.uk

On September 25th, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For those keenly interested in nutrition – which given the centrality of nutrition to development should mean everyone – this is cause for two cheers, but not three.

Cheer 1The SDG predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals, included the halving of the percentage of underweight children, but not explicit measures of chronic or acute undernutrition. The SDGs rectify this. Goal 2, “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”, includes ending all forms of malnutrition, including, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5. These targets, first mooted by the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons Report in 2013, build on a growing evidence base that demonstrates that undernutrition in the first 1000 days has life-long damaging consequences. For stunting, the target is a 40% reduction by 2025 with 2012 being the base year. If achieved, the number of children chronically undernourished will fall below 100 million.

Cheer 2Goal 2 recognizes the importance of the nutritional needs of several key vulnerable groups, including adolescent girls and pregnant and lactating mothers. Not only are healthy mothers are intrinsically important, healthy mothers are the precursor to healthy children. And the path to healthy motherhood begins in adolescence.

But not three cheersWhile there is much to be said for SDG2, there are at least three major concerns. At the top of the list is the issue of commitment and accountability. As the 2015 Global Nutrition Report (GNR) makes clear, not only is commitment to improved nutrition lacking across much of the globe, in many countries there is not even enough data to gauge commitment. When GNR 2015 asked country signatories to the 2013 Global Nutrition for Global Growth compact to report on their progress towards the commitments they had made only 18 months previously, 28 percent were unable to do so. As GNR 2015 notes, nonresponse equals unaccountability. Concerns regarding commitment are also supported by the recently released Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) which shows that only eight out of 45 countries have a high commitment to tackling hunger and undernutrition and commitment by one third of countries listed – including Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo – is very low.

Second, while the explicit inclusion of the nutritional status of adolescent girls and pregnant and lactating women is welcome, neither an indicator nor a numerical target is proposed for these. In an environment where what can gets measured is what gets monitored, there is a real risk that this component of SDG2 will fade away. Lastly, the goals are ambitious. They imply an average annual rate of reduction (AARR) of 3.9 percent. Only 39 countries are currently on track. Ambition can be a spur to action but too much ambition can lead to disillusion and absence of commitment. Ominously, India is not on track and with approximately 40 percent of the global population of chronically undernourished children, failure to meet the goal for stunting reduction in India will make it enormously difficult to push global numbers below 100 million.

This blog is written by John Hoddinott, Babcock Professor of Food and Nutrition Economics and Policy, Cornell university and Research Director, Transform Nutrition

Nick Nisbett and Dolf te Lintelo from the Institute of Development Studies write in the Guardian about the need for the sustainable development goals to reflect the complex causes of malnutrition in order to tackle one of the world’s foremost health challenges.

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Transform Nutrition is a consortium of five international research and development partners funded by the UK Department for International Development. Using research-based evidence we aim to inspire effective action to address undernutrition.